


a myth nobody actually believed

by saintsavage



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: BECAUSE I HAVE A NEWFOUND PROBLEM, Willgator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 06:30:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14665278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintsavage/pseuds/saintsavage
Summary: ...Willgator.





	a myth nobody actually believed

**Author's Note:**

> This is literally just a drabble because I could not help myself.

Dogs aren’t generally afraid of him, like everything else in the world - natural or otherwise. He found his first stray in the swamp, tied in up a garbage bag, and was so _angry_ about it. He freed the half-grown pup and took it deep in the swamp, to a spot the more dangerous creatures avoided because it was _his_. And then he went hunting.

Because Will has an amazing sense of smell, and he knows that unpleasant blend of tobacco, cheap liquor, and failure. He’s smelled it before, usually late in to the night, poaching what he can. The man isn’t missed, and Will keeps the dog.

As his collection grows, a varied group of all shapes and sizes, Will begins teaching them tricks, little things that are amusing and pass the time. This has the added benefit of his dogs knowing how to con tourists out of food, to keep their bellies full if they wander too far from the swamp. Sometimes they bring him back other things - a broken telescope, a few phones, a scarf. Gifts Will lines his quiet little hillock with.

Sometimes the dogs bring him back men. _Food_.

They don’t bring him Hannibal, though. The man comes on his own, taking over an abandoned, half-ruined manor house that he has renovated over the next few months. Will doesn’t like him, or the change. There had been times were he’d gone through the old house, had even curled up and slept there when the storms got bad. It feels like an invasion until one night Will hears screaming and decides to investigate.

He watches dispassionately as Hannibal follows a limping man across the lawn, tilting his head before grabbing the injured stranger’s leg and dragging him back to the house.

Will is curious, but not foolish. He’s never seen another human hunt like that. Not to say he hasn’t seen them kill. The swamp is rife with corpses, the natural ending place for people who have become, through passion or rage, bodies instead. _Meat_. But they’ve never been dispatched so coldly, so cruelly. Usually there are tears. Maybe satisfaction. Not whatever he’d just seen.

Clearly, Hannibal is dangerous. Perhaps a threat to the pack. Will decides to get closer, begins spending more time there, sunning himself on the banks of the pond, crawling through open windows and rooting around through Hannibal’s things - amused by the mess he leaves, the small traces of mud, the claw marks lacing the beautifully laid wood floors.

When Hannibal sees him for the first time, Will imagines there might be terror. Fear. Perhaps he’ll even scream. Most people do when they see him: Will is not a natural looking phenomenon. They call him a monster, a beast, hurt themselves in an effort to get away.

The exception is a haunted girl, located even deeper in the swamp, isolated by her parents. She’s the unhappiest human he’s ever encountered and that’s probably why they are unlikely friends, fishing together when her father leaves to hunt (kills Will later finds in the woods, painfully little left of them) and her mother is too far gone to notice. They never speak, but it’s better that way.

Hannibal doesn’t react though, in any discernible way. It’s clear he thinks animals have broken in to his home (not unusual, given the location) before now and seeing Will in the pond he merely watches, unmoving for so long that Will has to wonder if he’s somehow turned to stone.

When the man leaves the window, Will sinks underneath the murky water.

The next few days Will is less cautious then he ordinarily would be. His younger years were spent constantly hiding, afraid of capture, of discovery. Of redheads and trashy headlines that had a whole barrel full of trouble heaped down on his head for years before he caught up with her. One quick bite and Will faded back to legend, to a myth nobody _actually_ believed. The Swamp Man. The Louisiana Gator Boy.

The next time Hannibal lays eyes on him Will is completely out of the water, laying back in the sun, calm and at peace. The dogs have been gone for a day or two - they leave sometimes, and Will wasn’t sure how safe they were with the new predator in the swamp. Somehow he knows that the man isn’t intimidated by him in the way animals might be. Better for the dogs to go for a bit, to roam. They’ll be back.

Will turns his head to observe as Hannibal steps on to the patio, watches the man freeze, utterly still. Yet so _unafraid_ of the monster curled up in his yard. Silence stretches on for a few minutes before he regains himself enough to speak, setting a beautifully prepared tray on the low table.

“You’ve been watching me.”

Though it’s been years since he’s spoken, the words come easily, rough and foreign to his ears: “Hello, Doctor Lecter.”


End file.
